Unrequited love or one-sided love is love that is not openly reciprocated or understood as such. The beloved may or may not be aware of the admirer's deep and strong romantic affections. The Merriam Webster Online Dictionary defines unrequited as "not reciprocated or returned in kind."[1]

PsychiatristEric Berne states in his book "Sex in Human Loving" that "Some say that one-sided love is better than none, but like half a loaf of bread, it is likely to grow hard and moldy sooner."[2] Others, however, like the philosopher Nietzsche, considered that "indispensable...to the lover is his unrequited love, which he would at no price relinquish for a state of indifference."[3]

According to Dr. Baumeister What makes a man or woman desirable, of course, is a complex and highly personal mix of many qualities and traits. But falling for someone who is much more desirable than oneself, whether because of physical beauty or attributes like charm, intelligence, wit or status. Dr calls this kind of mismatch "prone to find their love unrequited. That such relationships are falling upward.[4]

'There are two dark sides to unrequited love, but only one is made familiar by our culture'[5] - that of the lover, not the rejector. In fact, research suggests that the object of unrequited affection experiences a variety of negative emotions on a par with those of the suitor, including anxiety, frustration and guilt.[6] As Freud long since pointed out, 'when a woman sues for love, to reject and refuse is a distressing part for a man to play',[7] and vice versa.

Unrequited love has been a frequent subject in popular culture. Movies, books and songs often portray the would-be lover's persistence as paying off when the rejector comes to his or her senses. The presence of this script makes it easy to understand why an unrequited lover persists in the face of rejection'.[8]

'Platonic friendships provide a fertile soil for unrequited love'.[9] Thus the object of unrequited love is often a friend or acquaintance, someone regularly encountered in the workplace, during the course of work, school or other activities involving large groups of people. This creates an awkward situation in which the admirer has difficulty in expressing his/her true feelings, a fear that revelation of feelings might invite rejection, cause embarrassment or might end all access to the beloved, as a romantic relationship may be inconsistent with the existing association.

Unrequited love has long been depicted as noble, an unselfish and stoic willingness to accept suffering. Literary and artistic depictions of unrequited love may depend on assumptions of social distance which have less relevance in democratic societies with relatively high social mobility, or less rigid codes of sexual fidelity. Nonetheless, the literary record suggests a degree of euphoria in the feelings associated with unrequited love, which has the advantage as well of carrying none of the responsibilities of mutual relationships: certainly, 'rejection, apparent or real, may be the catalyst for inspired literary creation..."the poetry of frustration"'.[10]

Eric Berne considered that 'the man who is loved by a woman is lucky indeed, but the one to be envied is he who loves, however little he gets in return. How much greater is Dante gazing at Beatrice than Beatrice walking by him in apparent disdain'.[11]

In the wake of his real-life experiences with Maud Gonne, in a further twist, W. B. Yeats wrote of those who 'had read/All I had rhymed of that monstrous thing/Returned and yet unrequited love'.[14] According to Robert B. Pippin, Proust claimed that 'the only successful (sustainable) love is unrequited love'.[15] According to Pippin, sometimes 'unrequited love...has been invoked as a figure for the condition of modernity itself'.[16]